G. David Felt

I really hope GM gets some EV Mojo to bring out some freakin world leading auto's to pounce on Tesla and the Upstarts from China like Xiaopeng Motors.

Nice Looking SUV. Politics suck and clearly that is what happened here as some idiot moron in GM Ivory tower could not see past his ass kissing servants below him in the ivory tower to see what Holden truly had to offer. So Sad, So Bad.

Awesome Clicking on twitter, I see the guy posted Ford's announcement of leadership change. Pretty much all the old folks are gone, in with the new young 40 to early 50's crowd. Good news for Ford.

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com SCiB, 200 miles, 6 minutes, Coming 2019 Toshiba announced today their newest battery cell, a lithium titanium oxide (LTO) battery. Capable of rapid charging with long life, low-temperature performance with high input/output power and large effective capacity. There is a wide range of solutions being put forth from the European 350 kWh charging system to Porsche's 800 kWh charging system and yet the one biggest desire of the switch to EV auto's has been how long it takes to charge. The key Toshiba says is in their new anode material. To quote: "We have developed a proprietary method for synthesizing and disarranging crystals of titanium niobium oxide and storing lithium ions more efficiently in the crystal structure." It's also more durable in "ultra-rapid" charging, and charging in cold weather, improving the battery's longevity. In testing, SCiB maintains more than 90 percent of its capacity after 15,000 charge/discharge cycles. Toshiba has stated this battery will be on the market in EV Auto's starting in 2019. They believe that the ability to charge 320 kilometers (199 miles) in 6 minutes will drive the change over to EV auto's. This give larger auto's with a bigger battery pack a normal 12 min charge time for approximately 400 miles of range. Spec SCiB battery Details: LTO - Lithium Titanium Oxide Over 15,000 cycles maintaining more than 90% battery capacity Low temperature with 100% battery charge to a low of -30°C Rapid Charging - 320 kilometers in 6 minutes High input/output current loads Wide effective state of charge (SOC) - Providing industry leading large available capacity in a reduced form factor. What does this mean to the auto industry? Denser batteries in a smaller form factor recharging faster, providing longer road trips. Announced auto companies to use the SCiB batteries in upcoming EV auto / bus applications: Passenger Auto's Suzuki Motor Corporation Mitsubishi Motors Corporation Commercial Vehicles Solaris Bus and Coach S.A Van Hool Hybrid Bus Company Proterra EV Bus Company Kawasaki Tsurumi Rinko Bus Co. Ltd. Northern Iwate Transportation Inc. Waseda University Medium Size bus program Putra Nedo EV Bus Program Uzushio Electric Co. Ltd. E-Trikes Toshiba SCiB web site Toshiba SCiB Technical Details Toshiba SCiB battery uses Toshiba green focus to offer more for less with minimal impact to the planet.

Stiff Thing-e

Opel has more orders than they can fill for the Opel Ampera E According to the news, Opel has issued an order to all opel dealers to pause on accepting anymore orders for the Ampera E EV auto that is based on the Chevrolet Bolt. To date, Chevrolet has delivered 15,000 bolts and in Europe 1,000 have been delivered in Norway alone with another 5,000 already on order. Opel has also started Ampera E deliveries in Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands. Opel has stated they want to ensure getting the Consumer Reports most reliable auto, the BOLT into as many hands as possible and at this time till they can fulfill the backlog, they are holding off on accepting new orders. There is no answer from Opel or GM on what is holding up production of the Ampera E for the European market as GM has the capacity to build far more auto's. Opel Ampera E story

Seems the following story on Electrek is that Tesla has been using the European standard mennekes plug also in China till this summer when China came out with their own GB standard plug. Tesla Proprietary plug is on the left and China GB plug is on the right. This has forced tesla to change from having it in the lense of the rear taillight to a gas type door on the rear quarter panel. GB port plugged in. According to the standard since Tesla has joined the CCS group to promote that as a global charge standard, they have also stated they would have adapters to plug into the cords. Seems this would allow others to use the supercharger stations too. Interesting, https://electrek.co/2017/10/16/tesla-new-dual-charge-port-design-model-s-model-x/

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com Xiaopeng Motors, Thanks Tesla for Open Source Patents It was only a matter of time and someone coughing up money before someone would use Tesla Open Patents to build a EV Competitor. Xiaopeng Motors is that company and thanks to Tesla, the dream of a young man is becoming reality. Musk has always said the focus is the drive to accelerate the change to EV Auto's. With this dream we now have the XPeng SUV EV. Henry Xia took this to hear in 2014 when once Tesla had announced the open source of their patents that this young engineer could build his own dream company. With the help of other young engineers, Mr. Xia took a look at the market and chose to come out with his vision of an EV SUV. There is no complete listing of all the open source patents Xiaopeng Motors used but clearly enough to say he hit the same consistency from battery pack to external look minus the gullwing doors and to the dash. Speculation is the top module on the auto is a Lidar unit. Comparison of the batteries where Xiaopeng uses Samsung battery cells via Tesla Panasonic cells. Xiaopeng Battery Tesla Battery Xiaopeng Dash Tesla Dash Xiaopeng Dash Screen Tesla Dash Screen Xiaopeng Motors raised 320 Million to start production beyond the 15 hand built models. They are working to raise 1.4 billion US to ensure the ability to produce 100,000 of the XPeng SUV EV. With the first round of money, the young CEO hired away Tesla learning lead for Autopilot, Junli Gu to head up Xiaopeng autonomous driving efforts as they plant to continue to copy Tesla using the Open source patents where possible to offer the same or better versions. Your thoughts on this? Will this help or hurt Tesla? XPeng has even copied the same charging port and standard from Tesla. Sound off on what you think about this. Xiaopeng motor story

EV Microbus, Beetle, The Thing, so many awesome auto's that can have a better life in the EV lane! Rock on MEB

Seems NY Times is complaining about the overload of early arrival Pumpkin Spice everything. Saw this in online ads. Crazy flavors:

Modern Corvette engine in the 1986 Aero Monte Carlo SS. Talk about sleeper!

Had a lovely tan 4 door Mavrick, awesome little car. Maybe an EV powertrain will finally make the late 70's and 80's mustang perform.

Yup 240 would be the standard if we stayed old school, it will be interesting to see what GM does as they move their tech forward. Considering that the Bolt is a 350 Volt voltage system, I could see a Buick Electra 350 as a true name. Deep Dive BOLT spec with pics Very cool details and pictures, one of the better stories on the tech behind the BOLT.

I can respect that, yet to me the soul of an auto is the love and admiration for it and to keep it on the road. The 1939 Pontiac the college did kept everything except the engine and old lights that ended up with LED bulbs to minimize energy use. They used a Warp motor that connected via a custom plate to the old original transmission. Rest of the auto stayed period consistent and they refurbished the dash with the original instrumentation. Kept more original than the truck. All in All, I think the soul is keeping the auto on the road running for others to see and enjoy even if it is an alternative powertrain like an EV unit. My 1994 GMC Suburban SLE will keep everything except the original engine as I change it over to EV and have plenty of space for long distance battery pack under the body between the original frame and use the old tube that the drive line went through as a tunnel for the electrical cable. Would not be surprised to see a Buick Electra based on the Chevy Bolt come to market in the next 18 months.

Good Luck, they should merge with Mazda.

Tesla breaks out how many stations like a gas station they have and then how many chargers are at the station. In this case they have 1,032 stations around the world or equal to gas stations. With those stations having about 8 supercharger outlets per station. Kinda like saying we have 1,000 gas stations with 8 pumps per station or about 8,000 pumps as an example. Makes sense now?

I wonder the breakdown of the 210 300s that have been sold, how many are V6, versus v8 or SRT versions etc. Would love to know the breakdown on the versions of 300's sold in RHD configuration.

Will Chrysler even be around in a couple more years at the rate Sergio is destroying the nameplate?

I think you should convert it and make it another Ghost EV Auto. B-59 Ghost EV. This is a cool project done to a 1939 Dodge Truck making it an EV Truck. Also, check out this story done by Green Car Reports of the Raonoke College, Salem, Virginia restoring a 1939 Pontiac Silver Streak but replacing the 4.0 liter straight 8 with a EV Powertrain. Love the color of the auto. http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1075942_converting-a-car-to-electric-how-about-a-39-pontiac-silver-streak Truly believe we are going to have another renaissance of young people loving auto's as they convert and save old awesome cars. trucks and suv's as they become EV's. Latest info on the 1939 Pontiac Silver Streak can be found here on their web site. https://orgsync.com/34883/chapter Gotta love the strength of old iron. They have a web site with lots of pics of the powertrain and having completed the auto for the 2015 graduating class. Now onto a VW bus conversion it would seem. https://www.facebook.com/RCElectricRoanokeCollege

Do not forget heated steering wheel, heated and cooled seats, hip room, leg room, head room, shoulder room, to name a few additional important needs too.

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com Tesla's World's Largest Supercharger Station Opens Tesla has been on a fast pace build out of supercharger stations around the world and in fact has two 40 stall supercharger stations under construction in California. Now comes word via a Tesla S owner Jason Man in China that they have opened up the largest Tesla Supercharger Station in Shanghai with 50 stalls, capability to charge 3 megawatts of power per hour. This is located in the Lilacs International Commercial Centre, Pudong district of Shanghai. China has committed to opening 10's of thousands of charging stations over the next 2 years adding to the extensive network offered by Tesla across China. Tesla has stated they now have over 1032 Supercharging stations world wide with over 7,300 Superchargers. Their network while focused on their own auto's is available to others for a nominal fee in some countries for charging by non-Tesla EV auto's. According to other news reports, Tesla has signed a deal with China to build and bring online within 18 months a second GigaFactory in mainland China to support Tesla's rapid growth of EV auto production in China. Pictures compliments of Jason Man of China posted to webchat. Tesla Supercharger web site electrek story

Doh, I think many here on this forum knew Skoda would be stupid to enter the US. Plus as VW focuses on EV auto's, it makes sense for Skoda to cover the entry level ice auto and fill in other areas for VW since not all 3rd world countries have the electrical infrastructure in place to support ev auto's.

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com HoverSurf, Newest addition to Dubai Police Force The first video has no audio and the second video is what was released by the Dubai police and is in their native language. Yet with that the Russian company that built the Hoversurf bike has stated the following about their bike and what it can do for the Police in Dubai. The bike can carry 300kg of weight or 661pounds. The bike has a top speed of 70kph or 43.5mph. The bike can fly full speed for 25 minutes. The bike flies at a height of 5 meters or 15 feet. The bike can fly by itself remote controlled for 6 kilometers or 2.73 miles. The whole purpose of this is that the police in trying to get to a scene of an accident are usually held up in the same traffic. This will allow them to fly over the traffic to get to the accident faster. The bike also has 360 degree cameras allowing for better monitoring of issues including but not limited to finding reckless drivers, scanning via facial recognition software for criminals or persons of interest. The future police is here today. HoverSurf web site

First stop making ASSumptions about a car that NO ONE has had a chance to drive yet let alone find out if they tune it for the German race track or not. Secondly, this car will sell to those that are not looking for a small tight fit auto like the ones you mentioned. SMK you know as a 6'6" tall person 280lbs, I am for the most part not fitting in those above except for the Vantage which I actually have gotten into and fit comfortably in and able to drive it. Every auto has their benefits and based on looking at the polestar 1, Hybrid so for those wanting more green they will have it. Looks a bit bigger inside than the others, and who knows what else, dash layout, fit n finish of chosen interior materials all will play a roll in those buying it. So far just as you are a rabid fan of MB playing devils advocate, I can say that MB excluding the S class has questionable size, performance and materials inside and out. Let's take a professional wait and see. Comment on what you can see, your thoughts on what they have released and leave the assumptions till after the auto is available to be driven and tested. Personally, I hope Polestar 1 is a hit, I like the exterior look, I love the layout of the dash and what looks to be a roomy comfortable interior. I hope they deliver on the fit and finish and exciting quality driving experience.

No Loss and No Gain, I bet they will wait till the Hybrid / EV auto's are here and then move to a number system like A6 60 for 60kWh battery pack or A6 100 for the 100kWh battery pack. Makes sense and works for Tesla. Hope GM does a Bolt SS that has an enhanced software tune to get more HP / Torque and a bigger battery pack.